


Spring Awakening

by ab2fsycho



Series: Hold My Tea and Watch This [30]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Multi, at least they're requited for once, looks like Bunny has feelings again, recovery and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 05:51:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ab2fsycho/pseuds/ab2fsycho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rest and recovery, and then some discoveries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this piece stemmed from a conversation with Subconscious_Melody.
> 
> Thanks for the inspiration, darling.

The battle with the monkey men was over quickly, and again the cowards retreated. North was still swinging when he felt the ground shake beneath him. He liked to imagine that was a dead dragon causing all that raucous, but he didn’t get his hopes up.

Speaking of which, he’d lost track of where the Guardian of Hope had chased the red beasts off to. A moment of panic surged through him as he realized just how far apart he was from his allies. He kept his swords up, glancing about for anything familiar or suspicious. When he saw nothing, he looked up at the clear sky and sighed. Wiping his brow, he whispered to himself, “Am too old for this.”

“North!” came a familiar cry of panic. Lifting his swords once more, he charged into the woods and spun about, searching for Bunny. “North!” the rabbit cried again. North heard him, but didn’t see him anywhere. “Look up, you bloody Cossack!” North looked up, and as soon as he saw what his friend had gotten himself into he laughed aloud. “It’s not funny!”

“Not funny? You’re all tangled up in a tree! How is not funny?” North bellowed through bouts of laughter. The look of embarrassment and disgust on Bunny’s face made his situation all the more hilarious. North inhaled deeply, trying to quell his hysteria before he responded, “At least you are back to normal size.”

“See, this is exactly why I don’t eat chocolate. Not only are the effects completely spontaneous, but I usually wind up in places that I wouldn’t normally dream of ending up in.”

“Oh, so you don’t normally end up in trees?”

“No, you bugger!”

“Not unless there is pretty girl in there.” The look Bunny gave him only made him start laughing again. “Oh don’t look so surprised, you rabbit.”

“How long?”

North placed his hands on his hips. “You think I don’t recognize wonder when I see it? You’ve been after her for as long as I can remember.”

“Have not.”

“Have, too.”

“Have not!”

“Better act fast, or you’ll miss your chance again.”

“Do you want me to die?!”

“On contrary, I’m telling you to live a little.”

Bunny and North stared at each other for a long while, Bunny glaring and North smiling up at him. At long last, Bunny rolled his eyes and sighed. His ears perked up a little as he asked, “Is this how humans normally encourage each other to do stupid things?”

“I’m sure some variant of eggnog is usually involved.”

“And one isn’t stuck in a tree?”

“That can happen at times, but you’re right. It’s not typical.”

Bunny’s ears flattened against his head. He exhaled heavily once more. “Remember when the only thing we argued about was the importance of Easter and Christmas?”

North sighed at the thought. “Good times.”

“Simpler times.”

“Aye. Simpler times.”



“Ow!”

“Sorry,” Jack whispered. He moved between Pitch and Tooth, both burned pretty badly. Tooth’s wing seemed almost shriveled. “How will this affect your flying?”

“It’ll heal slowly.” She looked solemn. “Very slowly.”

“Will some cold help it? It usually helps him,” Jack said, gesturing to Pitch. Pitch was asleep in the darkest part of the area where they’d landed, dreamsand swirling above his head. It was the only way Jack could force him to rest. Rest and a layer of ice over the burn marks on his legs were the only things that would help him heal.

“You can try it,” Tooth said. Jack hurt for her. He couldn’t imagine not being able to fly, and that was the only way she seemed to travel. It was rare to see her feet touch the ground. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her land willingly.

He readied his ice, but Sera stopped him. “This’ll help,” she said, holding up a green paste that Jack thought looked similar to the crushed herb she’d used to soothe the injury she’d given him.

As Sera spread the goo over Tooth’s wing, Jack asked, “How’d you get it to work so fast?”

“The herb? I have my own garden. Hidden, of course.” She patted the pouches on her belt with one hand before saying, “Figure you can never be too careful.”

“So you make up your own remedies?”

“No. I enhance the effects your average herb has on its user. It took a long time to get them to work this fast. Lots of talking to plants and lots of time spent caring for them. It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough time on my hands, though. You know?” She finished up applying the salve to Tooth’s wing, then watched as Jack covered her handiwork with a layer of frost. Tooth breathed a sigh of relief as Sandy held her hands comfortingly. “My magic is slow working,” Sera continued, “but incredibly effective.”

“Would you say you could fix anything?” Jack asked.

“If I have enough time.” Sera raised an eyebrow. Jack squinted as he realized for the first time that, unlike her father, she actually did have eyebrows. “What do you have in mind?”

He took a deep breath, realizing that what he was about to ask might be damn near impossible to pull off. He asked anyway. “Rin. You’ve barely met him, but . . .,” Jack stopped and looked at Pitch. He thought hard before looking back at Sera and continuing, “Things would be easier if I didn’t have a shadow ricocheting through me.”

“Your Fearling half is bothersome? And he can’t fix that?” she gestured to Pitch.

“Not without hurting me, he thinks.”

Sera glanced up, thinking. “You want him completely gone?”

Jack sighed. “He’s helped us a lot. I don’t want him dead, but I can’t share my body with him forever. Pitch’ll be the first to tell you all the things he’s done to torment us.”

“Just for the sake of curiosity, can I get an example?”

“He stole one of Pitch’s torture tools and threatened to remove my eye.”

“Yeah, he’s gotta go.” She put her hands together, thinking a little more. “Just exorcising him would take some time. Keeping him sentient long enough to find him a new body is another matter entirely.”

“So you can do it?” Jack grew hopeful at the prospect.

“Give me some time to think it over. In fact, don’t expect a miracle till after the Nidhogg business is over with.”

Jack nodded eagerly. “Absolutely! It’s just . . . thank you!” Before he knew what he was doing, he threw his arms around Sera. She stiffened at the touch, and the reality of Jack’s actions hit home. He moved back hastily, releasing her. “Sorry.” The look of utter surprise on her face would’ve been comical had this not been the same woman who hammered his guts only a day ago. Or was it a few days ago? How had he lost track of time?

She shook her head, reorienting her senses before saying, “It’s cool.” Her eyes widened at her own sentence. “Really cool. Damn, you’re that temperature all the time?” He shrugged, but before he could answer, she waved her own question aside. “Just . . . a little warning next time?”

“Yes! Warning! Warnings are important,” he agreed.

She actually cracked a smile at that. “In the meantime, I better go find that last two Guardians.”

Jack moved to sit beside Pitch. “Yeah, can’t imagine what they’re doing.” As soon as Jack was settled beside his Boogeyman, she stood. There was a moment of quiet before Jack let out a surprised gasp, long black and gray arms wrapping around his waist as Pitch practically curled around him. Both of Sera’s eyebrows raised as Jack’s cheeks flushed. “This . . .,” he struggled to continue the thought, “is normal.”

“That’s normal?” He nodded curtly, his lips tightening in a thin line as he realized just how awkward this must look to individuals not used to the relationship that was Pitch’s and Jack’s. “You really are his pillow.”

“Afraid so. He’ll be upset that he wasn’t awake to hear me scream.”

Sera shook her head at that. “I’m walking away now.”

“Sounds good.” With that, she turned and made her way through the rainforest in search of North and Bunny. Jack stared down at the sleeping Nightmare King wrapped almost completely around him. “I’m gonna kill you when you wake up.”



When Sera found North and Bunny, the rabbit was in the exact same spot he had been stuck in when he’d called North over.

North threw his arms up in the air excitedly. “Sera! Just the girl we were talking about and waiting for!” Bunny was going to kill North for that. North placed his hands back on his hips and winked at her. “Dragon is taken care of, right?”

“For now. He’s grounded, but most likely not dead.” She looked up at Bunny. “Do I even want to know?”

“Chocolate was involved.”

“I bet you never climbed a tree so fast in your entire existence.” She looked to North. “Tooth and Pitch were injured in the battle, but I think they’ll be alright. Follow the trail I left you and you’ll find them.”

“And you’ve got the Bunny?”

“Unfortunately for him, yes. I’ve got him,” she said. North looked up at Bunny for a moment, also winking. Then he followed the path Sera had left for him, leaving Mother Nature and the Easter Bunny alone.

They stared at each other for a moment, their faces expressionless. Well, Bunny tried to seem expressionless. He probably looked pissed, but what did anyone expect? He preferred being on the ground (or under it, for that matter), and here he was back up in a tree. She moved first, reaching for her bow. “You gonna put me out of my misery?”

“Somehow, I don’t think it would be this easy to get rid of you,” she uttered with a smile. At least she was smiling. That was a little comforting. He just might live through this.

After she’d strung up her bow, she pulled an arrow and notched it. As she took aim, he felt a shudder go through him at how close the arrow’s path would cut past his head. “Aw crikee,” he said nervously.

“Just relax and trust me. You only have a little ways to fall.”

“Fall—!” Bunny was cut off by her loosing the arrow, the barbed instrument skirting his ears and slicing through the vines that held him up. Once those vines were cut, he went tumbling down through the branches to the forest floor. He landed flat on his stomach with a loud thud, and was left groaning from the impact.

“Alright, so I lied. Your landing made your fall a little less pleasant,” she said, unstringing her bow and placing it back in her quiver.

“Ugh,” he grumbled. “You expected that to be pleasant?”

“I expected you to land on your feet!”

“I’m not a cat!”

“So I’ve noticed!” she retorted, stepping over to him. She wrapped her arms around and under one of his, trying to help him up. It wasn’t until he tried to move that he felt an awful sensation run up the length of his back and he cried out. She held him still, but stopped pulling as she looked to find the source of his outburst. “How on earth did you not notice a gash that size sooner?”

“If it’s on my back, it’s not like I can turn around and look at it!”

“But couldn’t you feel it?”

“I tend to lose my senses after a round of chocolate, in case you haven’t noticed already.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed! Can you sit up?” She unhooked her arms from his and Bunny let out another irritated groan before shoving himself upright. He hissed at the pain that shot down his back. She placed a hand on his shoulder, helping him stay up as she looked at the gash. “This is deep. You really didn’t feel this?”

“I may recall a scratch during a fight with some monkey men, but nothing like what this feels like.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a serious problem. Steady yourself. I’m going to try to treat it.”

“With what?!”

“A plant. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” He heard her searching through her pouches in search of an herb that would best help.

“I don’t wear panties . . .,” he snarled, his ears flattening against his head again, squinting into the forest.

“You don’t wear anything anymore,” she said with a snicker. Then her laughter grew louder as she started to crush her herb of choice using her mortar and pestle. 

“What’s so funny now?” he asked defensively. He gestured with his paws, but soon realized that any movement only made his back hurt more.

She stifled the giggling long enough to ask, “Remember your egg-shaped glasses?”

“Hey now! North is barred from speaking of my old wardrobe, and now you are, too!”

His protests made her giggling worse. “Why so sensitive, Bunny? I liked your green, egg-shaped glasses. Tell me you kept them.”

“Haha, no!” He hissed when he felt her rubbing something into the gash that he had not been aware of until he’d returned to the ground.

They remained quiet as she continued applying her medicine. Judging by the amount of his back she had to cover with the herb, he was definitely surprised that he hadn’t noticed the injury sooner. When she was finished and had put away her equipment, she came to stand in front of him. “I don’t suppose you can get up and start walking?”

“Do I look like a masochist to you?”

For a moment, their faces were blank. Then they smiled and sniggered as she knelt down in front of him. “You’d have to be.”

“I would, now?”

“As often as I attacked you? And still you stuck it out?” The laughing and smiling died off, and she started to look blank again. “I still can’t believe how easy it is to talk to you. After all this time. Aren’t we supposed to have a hard time with this sort of thing?”

“You’d think so, but we’ve never exactly been normal.”

“What is normal, anyway?” She stopped, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh God.”

“What?”

“Just . . . I haven’t exactly gotten used to seeing . . . Pitch and Jack act like a couple.”

He paused, surprised that she actually referred to Pitch by name instead of just calling him ‘him’ or something akin to ‘him.’ The thought made him smile. He said, “No one is used to it. What brought that up?”

“I left just as he wrapped himself around Jack’s waist. Twice. Apparently that’s normal.”

“I . . . haven’t had the ‘pleasure’ of seeing such a thing.” In fact, Bunny had to shake his head to keep from envisioning such a feat.

“That right there was my exact reaction!” she said, gesturing to Bunny’s facial expression. That made them laugh again.

A moment of silence passed over them as they elected to sit and wait for the medicine to really numb Bunny’s pain. Bunny got ready to ask her something, but stopped himself. She probably didn’t want to hear him ask her not to disappear again. Then again, maybe that was exactly what she needed to hear in order to get her to stay in touch with him. But he wasn’t quite brave enough to ask yet. Instead, he said, “So. Wardrobes. What exactly happened to yours?”

She shrugged. “This feels a little more practical than that old dress. It got torn to shreds out here.”

“And all the damn weapons? How’d you accumulate them and how do you lug them around all the time?”

“It takes me hours and focus to even get my magic ready to use. I needed something else to protect me on short notice. So I improvised.”

“The knife didn’t cut it?”

“It’s sentimental. And I only use it when absolutely nothing else will work.”

“Sentimental? Like my aster?” She reached self-consciously for the back of her neck at the question, habitually checking to make sure it was hidden. He wanted to smile, wanted to be happy that she’d kept it. Instead, he just felt sad. To hell with it, he thought. He asked, “Is there any way I can convince you not to leave when this is through?”

She sighed, staring down at her open palms. Her silence made him uneasy. When she looked back up, she said, “I’ve already promised Jack to help him with the Fearling. I honestly don’t know what to do after that.” She thought for a moment. “I wanted to remain emotionally unattached from all of you, but you all make it very hard to keep to that plan.”

“Would it be so bad if you rejoined the world, instead of hiding in the woods?”

She pinned him with a gimlet stare. “Hiding in the woods is better than being at the beck and call of someone who can’t even answer a simple question.”

“Believe it or not, we’re just as out of the loop as you are most of the time.” Bunny snorted, then added, “You wanna complain about Manny, the right person to talk to is actually Jack. Three hundred years and he heard not so much as a peep from the Man in the Moon.”

“And he’s a Guardian?”

“Believe me, I didn’t want him to be. He didn’t want to be. But something changed in him, and here he is.” Then Bunny rolled his eyes and grunted. “With the Nightmare King hanging off him.”

“Don’t remind me. I think I’m scarred.”

“But seriously. Would you consider sticking around? I stuck with you all that time.”

“Did you?” Her gaze was melancholy, and he felt a pang of guilt staring back at her.

“I should have.”

They continued staring at each other. Something seemed to click in her head, and the sadness was replaced with minor irritation. Bunny prepared to get punched in the face as she raised her clenched fists at him and said, “I hate you, you fluffy bastard.”

His ears shot upright. “What?!” Before he could react, she grabbed the fur on his shoulders and pulled him toward her. He’d had no idea what to expect, but he certainly hadn’t expected Sera to be kissing him. Warmth surged through him as the reality of the kiss sank in and his arms wrapped around her instinctually. Her grip on his coat loosened as her hands slid up his neck to the sides of his face. Ignoring the pain from the gash, he pulled her flush up against him and eliminated the distance between them. When they finally stopped to breathe, eyes still closed and still holding onto one another, Bunny said, “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Well, I do. I hate you. Making me have feelings for you.”

“No one makes you do anything, Sera. Don’t even try to blame me.”

He opened his eyes just enough to see her smiling despite herself. They stayed like that for a moment, him watching her while her eyes remained closed. When she finally did open her eyes and look up at him, she said, “Pitch should’ve killed us by now.”

“No, he should’ve killed me by now.”

“At least this time I get to call him a hypocrite if he finds out and says anything.”

“That does not mean I won’t die.”

“Doesn’t mean you will either.” She started wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “I forgot how much hair is involved when kissing you.”

“See, now that’s just rude. You think I can help that I’m covered in fur?” This only made her laugh as she continued wiping the hair from her face. “It’s not that funny!”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it’s not! You and North, finding joy in my plight. What’s wrong with the both of you?” She paid him no heed and just continued laughing. Bunny sighed and rolled his eyes, ears flattening. “I think I can move now. Wanna get going?”

“Aww, so soon?” she asked through laughs.

“You’re the devil.”

“Devil’s daughter, to be accurate.”

“You’re killing me,” he whispered before kissing her again.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's what I've been doing on my break! Four updates for my googies (great, Bunny's language is rubbing off on me).
> 
> So it has been decided by the voices in my head that we are capping off at thirty-five works. In the event that they're lying to me, I know for a fact that there will be no more than forty. Sad to see the end, but it has to. Jack and Pitch can only bother me for so long, and my AU's are starting to talk to me. This all should sound rather disturbing, but I assure you this is completely normal for me.
> 
> Went to Otakon 2013 dressed as fem!Pitch Black. When I post the pictures on tumblr, I'll link ya'll to 'em. In the meantime, I still need to email the lovely photographer and thank her for helping me out that day. My wig fell off and everything. It was a fabulous cosplaying experience. Hats off to those of you who have mastered the art. This introvert was entirely too shy and scared to stay in character.
> 
> Enough about me! I hope you all enjoyed this mountain of things I've thrown at you today. Don't forget to message the characters if you have le questions on twofacedpsycho.tumblr.com. Also, say hi to Kozzy and Thomas if you check things out over there. They're being little judgmental shits.


End file.
